Nadhir Ashafiq

Ramai juga orang tanya – siapa dia co-star photoshoot/videoshoot kami bersama Shaheizy Sam?

Dia ni lah iOS developer kami.

Di Kongres ABS 2017 tempoh hari, saya ada menceritakan pentingnya mendapatkan 100 pelanggan pertama untuk mencapai “product-market fit”.

Berikut adalah step2 yang kami buat untuk dapatkan 100 pelanggan pertama:

Saya pernah rasa nak give up.

Probably ramai entrepreneur pernah rasa nak give up juga.

Kita buat satu satu benda – lepas tu tak jadi.

Cuba macam mana pun, still tak jadi.

Atas, bawah, kiri, kanan – segala jenis pintu dah try.

Tapi still tak jadi.

Time ni lah kita mula ragu sama ada benda kita buat ni ada value ke tidak.

Kita self-doubt.

“Aku buang masa ke buat ni?”

Tapi kadang-kadang sebab kita tahan. Kita persevere. Kita percaya dengan diri kita.
Tiba-tiba berita baik datang. Terus ubah hidup kita. Daripada tak jadi – terus jadi!
Kalau kita give up awal tadi, kita tidak akan rasa nikmat berita baik ni.
Tahan!

P.S: Tshirt official Global Transformation Forum (yang tiket mahal gila tu) by Salty Customs. Dapatkan di nadhir.me/saltygtf17

P.P.S: Bukan gambar posing. Serious. 100% candid.

Semalam berguru dengan salah seorang usahawan level ratus juta tentang pengurusan syarikat.

“Nadhir, give me a pen and paper.”

Beliau pun lukislah bell curve seperti di bawah yang menunjukkan hayat sebuah syarikat dari awal sampai akhir.

Kemudian beliau tulis pula empat personaliti pengurus:
1. Producer (P) – seorang yang berfikir tentang results, results dan results.
2. Administrator (A) – seorang yang berfikir secara tersusun dan fokus kepada proses serta SOP
3. Entrepreneur (E) – seorang yang mempunyai visi dan idea gila
4. Integrator (I) – seorang diplomat, yang dapat bekerjsama dengan semua orang dan bina culture bagus

Beliau kata:

Continue reading “Sedut ilmu” »

Kerugian dalam bisnes itu adalah suatu perkara yang biasa. Anggaplah itu sebagai “yuran tuisyen” yang kita perlu bayar dalam perjalanan kita menjadi jutawan.

Tetapi apa yang kita tidak mahu adalah kerugian ratusan ribu ringgit untuk idea yang unproven atau tidak diketahui sama sekali peluang kejayaannya.

Ngeri.

Namun begitu, risiko ini dapat dikurangkan sekiranya kita menjalankan proses validasi idea bisnes itu terlebih dahulu sebelum bermula.

Validasi?

Validasi apa ni Nadhir? Kita nak buat eksperimen sains ke?

Tepat sekali.

Continue reading “Validasi: Bagaimana Hendak Menguji Idea Startup dan Kurangkan Risiko Rugi” »

Back in June 2016, I was looking for a digital marketing guy to take over our FB & Google Ads responsibilities.

But it’s difficult to gauge a person’s skills in digital marketing by just doing interviews.

So I had them do a case study, to be submitted on the same day.

Below is the case study:

Continue reading “How I hired an amazing Digital Marketing specialist” »

It has been close to a year since I wrote Making TheLorry.com: A journey from idea validation to being VC-funded.

As 2016 comes to a close, this article will highlight our hits, misses and key learnings for upcoming entrepreneurs.

The Chilli’s Summit

Fresh from receiving our Series A funds (USD1.5 million), Chee and I had dinner at Chilli’s early January 2016 to discuss top-level strategy and our plans for the year.

Quite simply, the goal was to grow x% by December 2016 in terms of revenue, number of bookings and gross profit.

We also discussed division of labour – I was to handle our bread-and-butter B2C business while Chee took on the fast-growing B2B department.

Continue reading “Making TheLorry.com: A year of growth and learning” »

On 19th January 2016, we announced our USD1.5 million Series A funding round. This is what happened behind the scenes.

Scaling up

When I wrote this post about TheLorry’s story on idea validation on Nov 2014, we were still basically a two-man team (two-man and a half if you count a freelance developer). I was doing mostly customer service & operations work whereas my partner and co-founder Chee Hau was in charge of marketing & sales.

(Btw, if you were our customer and noticed a certain “Adam” replying – that was me. “Adam” was my customer service alter-ego.)

As we started to get traction, we were convinced that our idea is sufficiently validated and it was time to put in more resource to take it to the next level.

Since tech is our core competency, we felt we should get a developer on board full-time. Freelance won’t work. Our credit cards were already maxed out so we needed to look for outside money in order to start hiring.

Continue reading “Making TheLorry.com — A journey from idea validation to being VC-funded” »

How to build a product on the right foot

Ok, so you’re driving back home after a mamak session with your friends. As you’re about to turn into the Kota Damansara exit of NKVE you suddenly get a moment of epiphany — you have an idea for a really cool website that hasn’t been done before, one of a kind.

You speculate that this website will go really, really far. It will make you billions of dollars after you exit and get acquired by Google. You can imagine yourself swimming in a pool with your future wife Ayda Jebat full of RM50 notes already.

After telling few of your friends about it (and always by starting the conversation with — “Eh, this is a secret ah, don’t tell anybody. I don’t want people to know about this and copy.”) you find yourself a co-founder who believe in your vision.

The both of you then start building wireframes on how the website would look like. You identify your target market and have a marketing plan in place. Since you worked in a management consulting firm before, your business plan slides exceed 30 pages.

Continue reading “Starting a Startup: 3 Reasons Founders Get It Wrong” »